Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas gave his thoughts on Los Angeles Lakers head coach Frank Vogel. According to Arenas, Vogel deserved a C+ at best for the 2020 championship-winning season.
“When [Frank Vogel] won a championship and someone asked me where do you rate him, I said ‘With that team he gets a C plus at best,'” Arenas said on fubo Sports. “The lineups he was putting in sometimes were just horrible.
“I was trying to figure out what are you expecting when some of these lineups, like you have Anthony Davis and LeBron and then there’s three non-scorers on the team, then why do I need to guard this person if he’s just a spot up shooter or he doesn’t shoot at all.
Like if or defense you’re setting up a defense not realizing on offense everyone’s looking at LeBron and AD So it’s harder for them to score because they got to go through five players now. So some of those lineups I was looking at — that’s just bad management right there.
“Yeah you won because the team that you played was just no actually good. The Heat was not a championship team. Let’s just be honest. That should have been 4-0. The fact that they won two says a lot about about subbing.”
Agent Zero then proceeded to break down the job that the Lakers head coach is doing this season. “If you look at this roster now and you’re like ‘What are you doing?'” Arenas continued. “I think [Montrezl Harrell] came out and said a few weeks back that ‘How I’m having success now is they’re playing me.’
“And then someone said ‘I don’t think they knew how to play him when he was with the Lakers.’ How do you not know how to play a player? isn’t hat your job as a coach to be flexible, unless you’re going in there with this idea that this is what we’re going to do and you’re just going to stick with it, it makes sense that you wouldn’t know how to play certain players.
“And that’s why some coaches are not good because they don’t actually understand what talent is, how that talent is played, how to utilize that talent. You’re stuck with this is what I want, this is what it’s going to look like, we’re going to do it this way. No, it’s 82 games. Try some sh*t! Try, try some sh*t! You’ll be surprised what you get when you try some sh*t.”
Arenas also thinks that Vogel does not know how to use Russell Westbrook the right way. When it comes to blowing leads, he thinks the reason behind that is bad substitutions. According to the three-time NBA All-Star, the Lakers should surround Anthony Davis and LeBron James with scorers rather than shooters as that will force the defense to stick their players instead of coming to help guard the stars.
